Recent years have seen an increase in international interventions in failed states and in conflict resolution for intra and inter state conflicts. While peacekeeping has a long history and has developed its own protocols, there has been a convergence between this activity and that of electoral assistance. Full scale country re-building actions led by the UN or similar regional inter-governmental organizations are receiving more attention. The cases of Namibia, Cambodia and Eritrea have been joined by Bosnia, East Timor and the Democratic Republic of Congo. On the African continent, peacekeeping and its more recent and more complex and controversial peace enforcement missions are present in countries in the Horn of Africa, the Great Lakes region and West Africa. Afghanistan and Iraq are drawing the attention and the resources of many Northern countries.
Educators are conducting innovative civic education programmes in many of these countries, making use of voluntary associations, expanding school enrollments, especially amongst girls, and adapting or reforming curricula, using many of the techniques and tactics described elsewhere in this topic area. The process of developing and implementing these programmes under adverse conditions may be as important in developing a commitment to democracy and the re-invigoration of a social fabric as the overt educational outcomes.
A more dangerous activity is undertaken when voter education is conducted in insecure or unstable countries in the run up to elections intended to act as conflict resolving mechanisms. While it is understandable that elections get planned under these circumstances, where there is presently either no legitimate national government or contested legitimacy, it is essential that such elections do actually poll the informed wishes of a broad electorate, otherwise they fail even in their limited aims. This means voter education or at the very least universally provided voter information.
In some of the countries where international troops and police are deployed, they have taken on either an educational mandate themselves or the mandate of protecting civic and voter educators. It is perhaps too early to evaluate this activity and to determine whether it has strengthened domestic commitments to democracy or has had the effect of creating a perception that democracy is a foreign or imposed concept. Where it is the only way to ensure the safety of educators and participants in educational events, there may be some particular principles to be born in mind. These are:
- nonpartisanship
- civilian and local ownership and mandate
- empowerment of voters
- non-discrimination
There are some particularly technical concerns in the delivery of elections under conditions where authority may be dispersed in a country between international administrators and security forces, previously existing state organs and emerging transitional structures. These will have an impact on educators and on educational provision, although they will often have no say in the manner in which these relationships are developed.
The experience in the Democratic Republic of Congo suggests that educators can insist upon empowering and thence developing the capability of the election management bodies which are created. This places the locus of authority where it will subsequently fall, and increases domestic ownership. This has some immediate consequences – efficiency of delivery may fall – but in the long run it contributes to the state-building and democracy-creation agenda which is presumably why international agencies have entered the country in the first place.
Lessons in the delivery of education and information programmes in these often unstable or contentious circumstances are still being learned. Some have chosen the centralized media route, others have used cascade strategies to ensure that local education programmes are delivered by local people who have less problems with access and security.
